Hello, everybody!
Get ready for the brand new FeedReader!
We worked hard during last year to present you the latest creation of our team.
Now it is almost complete. Check our site later this March for a new amazing web service, featuring industry-best RSS search and analysis.
Good day, everyone!
We are glad to present you our newly redesigned website that unites the best solutions from Feedreader family: Feedreader Online, Feedreader Lookup and Feedreader Browser. These are the three solutions we're going to concentrate on developing. We hope that you will appreciate our new sleek, smoothed and polished to perfection design.
Unexpected news has reached us today: Google Reader is closing on July 1. The world's most popular feed reader has caught many of us off guard and puzzled as to what RSS tools to use now.
It has been quite long time when we have announced something. That does not mean that Feedreader is dead. We have some corporate projects with what we have been busy.
But now it's time for new announcement. We are announcing Feedreader Connect Updater Linux version. It's meant to run on linux console and uses MySQL as database backend.
Please refer to our site for information about Feedreader Connect. It runs the same way in both Windows and Linux.
Sometimes you want your own portal. And you want it fast. And you do not want to develop it. You have some interesting feeds that you are reading and an organization (or a bunch of friends) who in your opinion should like to read the feeds, too. Till this time quite only way of giving feeds out to your friends or co-workers has been the RSS way (like Feedreader) or using Google Reader and reading list functionality. But these technologies are sometimes too difficult to understand for persons who are not into all this RSS stuff.
So here is the alternative. We have designed a system that runs on top of Feedreader Connect. And all we need to do for creating new news portal is giving it a domain name and specifing the feeds that you would like to be included in portal. And that's it. After 15 minutes news portal is ready.
We have some examples here :
www.techtrack.eu talks about gadgets. We have gathered best technology blogs and feed them into the system. There's also a section about Shanzhai technologies that I find really breaking then talking about technology future.
hkblogs.net is basically an aggregator of blogs talking about Hong Kong or blogs written by people living in Hong Kong. I really love Hong Kong, so creating a portal based on my favorite blogs is natural step :).
If you would like to test out your own portal then just write to us. We can create a demo for you.
RSS has taken a fast lane with free games and Free-Games.net has an RSS feed for their subscribers to get the best free games available.
We have been quite busy lately because of the developments that are going on on Feedreader Connect Server front. We are happy because there are a lot of orders, product evaluations, consulting customers and so on. Feedreader Connect Server has been in production for about three years but only now companies are getting really interested in gathering data and analyzing it.
What comes to our clients and their use cases then basically there are two different uses of Feedreader Connect Server. Some customers are using Feedreader Connect to update the feeds and then present data on public portal with their own user interface. Another example is Techtrack - leading technology blogs in one site and blogs.station - all Estonian blogs in one site. Other group of customers uses Feedreader Connect Server as media monitoring tool for use inside the corporation. We also have some professional media monitoring companies as our clients who offer services to end users.
We are always happily giving out Feedreader Connect Server evaluations. If you are interested then contact us and we will help to get it running. As we have more than 10 years of competence then it comes to both technical issues and media monitoring and data analyzing then we can be quite helpful then it comes to deciding how to implement some service, how is the best way to gather data, analyze it. We can also offer development services then it comes to building your product/service on top of Feedreader Connect Server.
We also remind you that we still run the "depression special ;)" campaign - you can get Feedreader Connect Server with unlimited feeds for 990 Euros.
Now a little brief about developments.
Based on customer request it's now possible to change working database in Feedreader Administrator and in Feedreader Connect Server and in Feedreader Connect Indexer.
So from now you can create multiple databases - one for testing, another for production and so on. We also came to clever idea - create a simple script that stops services, changes database location and then starts services again. Doing this you can basically have multiple instances of Feedreader Connect Server running - each instance updating it's own feeds.
Another cool change that we did is the change of threads count in Feedreader Connect Server. Before the change maximum thread count was 16, now it's 24. What does thread count mean and how it changes the performance? Basically thread count is the number of thread that download feeds simultaneously. The bigger is the thread count the more feeds can Feedreader Connect Server update. And we must tell that Feedreader Connect Server is not a toy at all. Although it's shares the roots with normal Feedreader, it's quite different kind of beast. In our tests Feedreader Connect Server can easily update 500 feeds in one minute - this is of course true with decent hardware (decent sql server).
We have played around with the idea of using RSS as data source for screensavers and information screens for a long time. And today we present you the next demo application based on Feedreader platform. It's called Feedreader Screensaver.
You can use Feedreader Screensaver either as just a Windows screensaver or install LCD monitor / LCD TV in some public location and use it as public information screen for displaying news / twitter tweets / company blog / company alert messages using Feedreader Screensaver software.
If you are interested in producing your own information screen with different graphic layouts and settings (currently the application shows only article titles) then do not hesitate to contact us.
If you would like to run the proof of concept application then it's available for download here. Unzip the package and after importing registry run frscreensaver.exe. IF you want to close application then just press ESC. Of course it's just a proof of concept – so it's not meant as a product for working environment. Please do not forget to import registry file to set all the feeds.
By default we are subscribing to specific twitter feed. You can easily change this in registry file ("import into registry.reg"). If you would like to change feed then please delete "rssengine.fdb" for feed changes to take effect.
If you want to use this application as windows screensaver then please rename frscreensaver.exe to frscreensaver.scr and copy all files from zip package to windows folder. After this you can open "Display properties" > "Screensaver" and set this screensaver as your default screensaver.
If you want to "reset" frscreensaver then just delete rssengine.fdb.
We had a couple of hours of free time here and played around with Feedreader modules again. This time we will present really simple Podcast Downloader as demonstration. As you see from image below, it's quite easy to add customer logo, change colors and of you go with your own Podcast Downloader for your users.
By the way - these kinds of applications are not only meant for podcasts. If needed then you can also offer documents, application updates, images with RSS protocol.
We were approached by a company that operates in health business. Company has a lot of branches all over the country and uses special desktop environment that helps sales persons to perform their duties. At first their idea was to purchase Feedreader OEM for use inside a company intranet. But while we were working with this company it became more and more clear that instead of full blown Feedreader they want really simple way of alerting sales persons for example about changed prices emergency situations and so on.
What were the main functional requirements for this application? Application had to run in a way that end user cannot change (and possibly break) anything. Everything had to be configurable from central location. Settings are read from registry. New feed subscriptions and old feed removals are also done automatically based on registry keys. One additional special requirement specifies the position and size of alert window. This requirement is needed because of special desktop environment. Only place to show alerts was on the upper right corner of screen. And of course we had to disable the way to move the alert window.
We have written about Feedreader platform before. To say it again - Feedreader platform is really flexible when it comes to developing different applications. We can take Feedreader core (called Newsbrain) and mold it to whatever application we currently need. Great example of flexibility is Feedreader Anywhere (FRAW) that is really the same Feedreader – only differences are user interface and database backend.
And because of all this flexibility we had an opportunity to offer 100% tailored solution for our customer. We took Feedreader core and added the parts of user interface that were needed. This simple project took less than week to accomplish and our client was really satisfied to get the solution that they had in mind.
We cannot show the real application because of sensitivity issues. At the same time here is a screenshot of a concept application that we made to demo our ideas.
If you would like to run the proof of concept application then it's available for download here. Of course it's just a proof of concept – so it's not meant as a product for working environment. Please do not forget to import registry file to set all the feeds.
It's about time to introduce new server based application called Feedreader Anywhere (or simply FRAW).
Feedreader Anywhere is version of Feedreader that runs, well, anywhere :). And it does not matter if we are talking about different operation systems or different geographical continents. Whatever kind of computer or phone or appliance you are using or in whatever location you are currently happen to reside – all your feeds are only a click away. And even if you have not used Feedreader Anywhere for a while you still have all the newest articles waiting for you. This is because Feedreader Anywhere updates feeds even if user has not logged on.
So in one word – Feedreader Anywhere is a Feedreader that is available anywhere without the need for complicated installation and management process.
